Category Archives: Russia

Germany suspects Russian agencies over Chechen exile killing

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Former insurgent Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was shot dead in a Berlin park in broad daylight

Germany’s chief public prosecutor suspects Russian intelligence agencies to be behind the killing of a former Chechen insurgent in Berlin and plans to take over investigations into the case, various German media outlets have reported.

Coming three months after Georgian citizen Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was shot in broad daylight in a Berlin park, such a move would amount to the German state officially accusing the Kremlin of carrying out a political assassination on German soil and likely lead to a similar diplomatic fall-out as over the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in the UK in March 2018.

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Leaked NHS papers ‘put online by posters using Russian methods’

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Questions about dissemination of documents do not mean they are fake, but poses new puzzle

Leaked documents said by Labour to prove that the NHS was “on the table” in trade talks with the US were initially disseminated online by anonymous posters operating in a way similar to a Russian information operation known as Secondary Infektion, according to a social media research firm.

A 19-page report published on Monday by the consultancy Graphika said that while it could not conclusively prove a Russian origin to the leak, the early distribution of the cache of files via Reddit, three German-language websites and an anonymous Twitter account reflected a method of operation seen repeatedly over recent years.

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Leaked footage allegedly shows Russian spy bribing an unidentified Serbian official – video

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Serbian authorities are investigating a video that purportedly shows a Russian spy handing over a bag of cash to an unnamed Serbian official. The video, uploaded anonymously to YouTube on Wednesday, later shows the Serbian man counting money from inside the bag while sitting in his car. Serbian officials confirmed the video was genuine and identified the agent as Georgy Kleban.

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Russia frees Norwegian and two Lithuanians in swap for pair of its spies

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Cold war style-agreement brings several high-profile espionage cases to a close

Russia has freed two Lithuanians and a Norwegian in return for two Russian spies held in Lithuania, in a cold war-style spy swap that brought several high-profile espionage cases to a close.

The Norwegian, Frode Berg, a retired border guard, was arrested in Moscow in 2017 and convicted of gathering intelligence on behalf of Norway. He pleaded not guilty.

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US accuses Russia of exploiting conflict in Libya

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US urges Khalifa Haftar to end offensive on Tripoli amid concerns about unofficial Russian influence

Fears that Russian mercenaries, unofficially backed by Moscow, are tipping the scales in Libya in favour of the military leader Khalifa Haftar appears to have prompted the US to issue a strong warning to the general to pull back.

The US has been accused of taking little interest in the eight months of fighting on the outskirts of Tripoli that began when Haftar’s Libyan National Army mounted an assault on Tripoli, provoking a fierce counter-offensive by militia forces supporting the Government of National Accord (GNA).

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UK-educated Russians are upholding Putin’s regime, says dissident

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Ukrainian film-maker Oleg Sentsov gives stark assessment of leader’s dictatorial rule

The children of Russian oligarchs learn about freedom in the UK only to return to Moscow to reinforce Vladimir Putin’s dictatorial rule, Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian dissident jailed for five years by Russia, has warned in a stark assessment of Putin’s stranglehold on power.

Sentsov, Russia’s most famous political prisoner, was released with 35 other Ukrainians in a high-profile prisoner swap in September, in which an equal number of Russians were released.

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Aeroflot fails to see funny side of flier’s fat-cat swap

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Airline scratches out traveller’s air miles after he used feline double to flout cabin rules

The Russian airline Aeroflot has stripped a passenger of his air miles after he boasted online of sneaking his overweight cat onboard by switching him for a slimmer cat during check-in.

Mikhail Galin wrote in a Facebook post last week that his cat Viktor was judged too fat to be taken into the passenger cabin during a layover in Moscow on a trip from Latvia to his home in Vladivostok, in the far east of Russia.

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Hillary Clinton ‘dumbfounded’ UK won’t release report on Russian influence – video

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Hillary Clinton has said she is 'dumbfounded' as to why the UK government has not yet published a report on alleged Russian interference in British politics. Speaking to BBC's Radio 4 Today programme, the former US presidential candidate said: 'Every person who votes in this country deserves to see that report before your election happens.'

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UK government delay of Russia report is shaming, says Clinton

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Ex-secretary of state says it is unacceptable to keep report from public before election

Hillary Clinton has called Downing Street’s suppression of a report into potential Russian infiltration of British politics “damaging, inexplicable and shaming”.

The 2016 US presidential candidate told the Guardian it was “incredibly surprising and unacceptable that in your country there is a government report sitting there about Russian influence and your current government isn’t releasing it”.

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Russian professor found with woman’s arms admits murder

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Napoleonic expert Oleg Sokolov fell in river trying to dispose of body parts in St Petersburg

A prominent Russian history professor has confessed to murdering his young lover and former student and dismembering her body in a gruesome crime that has sent shockwaves across Russia.

Oleg Sokolov, a 63-year-old expert on Napoleon Bonaparte who received France’s Legion of Honour from Jacques Chirac in 2003, was arrested on Saturday on suspicion of murder after he was hauled out of the icy Moika River with a backpack containing a woman’s arms.

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‘I would love to go’: Trump considers Putin invite to Russia – video

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Donald Trump has said he is considering attending a Russian military parade in May, claiming he has been invited by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. The US president spoke to reporters on the White House lawn, where he also talked about Michael Bloomberg entering the Democratic primary. 'He’s not going to do well, but I think he’s going to hurt Biden actually … There’s nobody I’d rather run against than little Michael,' he said

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Russian army’s hazing culture drove son to kill soldiers, says father

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Ramil Shamsutdinov opened fire on eight fellow soldiers on Siberian military base

The father of a Russian conscript who allegedly shot and killed eight fellow soldiers on an army base last month has blamed a culture of brutal bullying for driving his son to carry out the attack, raising fresh concerns over a poisonous culture of hazing that Russia claimed to have eliminated from its army.

Ramil Shamsutdinov opened fire from his service weapon last week on a military base in Russia’s Transbaikal region, killing two officers and six soldiers. Some media reports said he targeted the heads of his victims during the rampage.

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Trump impeachment inquiry: Sondland revises testimony and admits Ukraine quid pro quo – live

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EU envoy acknowledges in updated testimony he told Ukraine it would likely not receive aid unless it announced investigations into Trump’s rivals

Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell appears to have bulldozed directly through protocol by forecasting, before the articles of impeachment have even been drafted in the House and Trump put on trial in the Senate, that the president will be acquitted.

“If it were today, I don’t think there’s any question — it would not lead to a removal,” @SenateMajLdr McConnell says of a potential impeachment trial in the Senate.

/2 McConnell: “I’m pretty sure I know how it’s going to end.” Says Trump will be acquitted by Senate like Clinton & Andrew Johnson

Sondland was asked, with respect to the “demands” made by Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani to investigate the 2016 election and Burisma, if “those conditions would have to be complied with prior to getting a meeting.”

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Vladimir Putin calls for ‘reliable’ Russian version of Wikipedia

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President says user-edited site should be replaced with Big Russian Encyclopaedia

Vladimir Putin has called for the creation of a more “reliable” Russian version of Wikipedia.

The president told a Kremlin meeting on the future of the Russian language: “As for Wikipedia … it’s better to replace it with the new Big Russian Encyclopaedia in electronic form,” RIA Novosti news agency reported. “At least that will be reliable information, presented in a good, modern way.”

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Hillary Clinton: Zuckerberg should pay price for damage to democracy

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Former presidential candidate criticises Facebook’s decision to let politicians lie in adverts

Mark Zuckerberg “should pay a price” for what he is doing to democracy, Hillary Clinton has said, as she expressed doubts about whether free and fair elections were even possible in the wake of Facebook’s decision to not factcheck political advertising.

Speaking in New York at a screening of The Great Hack, a Netflix documentary about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate cited the threat to upcoming elections in both the US and UK as she made the damning remarks about Facebook’s decision to allow politicians to lie in adverts posted to its platform.

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PM accused of cover-up over report on Russian meddling in UK politics

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No 10 refuses to clear release of report into Russian political interference before election

Boris Johnson was on Monday night accused of presiding over a cover-up after it emerged that No 10 refused to clear the publication of a potentially incendiary report examining Russian infiltration in British politics, including the Conservative party.

Downing Street indicated on Monday that it would not allow a 50-page dossier from the intelligence and security committee to be published before the election, prompting a string of complaints over its suppression.

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Dominic Grieve calls for release of report on Russian meddling in UK

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Chair of intelligence and security committee says dossier has facts ‘germane’ to election

Dominic Grieve has called for the publication of a report on Russian meddling in the democratic process to be published before the general election, saying it contains knowledge “germane” to voters.

The cross-party intelligence and security committee had expected Boris Johnson to approve publication of the 50-page dossier by Thursday.

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To the moon and back with the eastern curlew

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Ultra-endurance athlete, aerodynamic wonder … and facing extinction. Why the bird who flies 30,000km a year needs Australia’s mudflats

• Vote for your favourite in the 2019 bird of the year poll

The ascent is vertical. Up, up and into the jet stream. If the conditions are not right up there it will come back down and wait. But if there is a good tailwind in the right direction it will begin an epic journey that will take it around the curvature of the Earth; from the Arctic Circle to the southern hemisphere.

Using the sun and stars as a compass, and navigating by the Earth’s magnetic field, recognising landmarks, the far eastern curlew will fly nonstop to the Yellow Sea, where it fuels up on the mudflats of north-east China.

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Trump-Russia dossier author gave evidence to UK intrusion inquiry

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Exclusive: Report allegedly being withheld by No 10 contains submissions from ex-head of MI6’s Russia desk

A report on Russian interference in British politics allegedly being sat on by Downing Street includes evidence from Christopher Steele, the former head of MI6’s Russia desk whose investigation into Donald Trump’s links with Moscow sparked a US political scandal.

Steele made submissions in writing to parliament’s intelligence and security committee (ISC), it is understood. A counter-intelligence specialist, Steele spent his career tracking Russian influence operations around the world and investigated Alexander Litvinenko’s 2006 murder.

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White House blocked effort to condemn Russia for seizing Ukraine ships, Congress told

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State department aide makes revelation in testimony, while Russia envoy nominee John Sullivan grilled at confirmation hearing

The White House blocked the US state department from issuing a statement condemning Russia for seizing Ukrainian military vessels, according to a state department official, in the latest example of the strain the Trump administration is under in pursuing conflicting policies towards the two countries.

Related: Unravelling Rudolph Giuliani’s labyrinthine ties to Ukraine

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